I am delighted to speak to the motion and am grateful to all the members who signed it and to the many organisations that have provided briefings to support the debate, some of which are represented in the gallery.
The sustainable development goals are global goals. The 2030 agenda for sustainable development was agreed by the United Nations in 2015 as
“a plan of action of people, planet and prosperity.”
The agenda aspires to
“end poverty and hunger ... protect the planet from degradation”,
ensure “prosperous and fulfilling lives” for all and
“foster peaceful, just and inclusive societies”.
Those are big ambitions that require innumerable actions by very large numbers of actors: Governments, intergovernmental agencies, non-governmental organisations, businesses, trade unions, voluntary and community organisations and individuals around the world.
We can be proud of the actions that have been taken by many people from and in Scotland towards achieving the goals worldwide. Whether through NGOs, churches or faith communities, secondment from work in our public services, or directly as volunteers or as part of Government engagement with developing countries, many thousands of people make a real and substantial contribution to achieving the sustainable development goals in some of the poorest countries on the planet.
However, the global goals apply here, too. Scotland will be judged not only on the work that Scots do or support elsewhere, but on how we as a country measure up against the goals. That is why today’s debate is focused on the latest report from Scottish civil society on progress in Scotland towards achieving the UN’s global goals.
“On Target for 2030?” asks how we are doing here, measured against the same standards as the rest of the world, and it produces some challenging answers. The question really matters, so we are indebted to Oxfam, in partnership with the University of the West of Scotland, and to the SDG Network Scotland, for producing a comprehensive assessment.
We are also indebted to a total of 22 organisations in civil society for the informed and insightful contributions that they have made—from the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland to the Built Environment Forum Scotland, from the Child Poverty Action Group to the Marine Conservation Society, from Girlguiding Scotland to the Scottish Trades Union Congress, and from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation to Business in the Community. Those organisations are all working at the front line on the whole range of sustainable development issues across Scotland. Scotland’s International Development Alliance puts all that in the context of Scotland’s place in the wider world, and emphasises that all the goals must be addressed together, not separately.
The report is a sobering assessment. Given that many of our constituents rely on food banks to feed their families, members will not be surprised to learn from Nourish Scotland that 8 per cent of the Scottish population described themselves as “food insecure”. Perhaps less familiar are the finding of research by Citizens Advice Scotland, that
“12% of households in Scotland may struggle to afford their charges”
for water and sewerage, and the projection by Changeworks, that the current Scottish Government target
“means that in 2040, 5% of the Scottish population will still be in fuel poverty, due to poor energy efficiency.”
A common thread among many of the analyses is the need to tackle inequality. Another is the need to do so with the participation of the people who are affected by inequalities. Oxfam quotes figures from the Office for National Statistics that confirm that
“the wealth held by the top 10% of households is around five times greater than the wealth of the bottom half combined.”
Oxfam concludes that
“until we address inequalities of power and political participation, progress on addressing economic inequality will be hindered.”
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation demonstrates that, in recent years, Scotland has simultaneously reached record levels of employment and record levels of in-work poverty, which taken together mean that we have not met the sustainable development goal of “decent work for all”. The STUC highlights some sectors in which poverty pay holds back workers, particularly women, and calls for sectoral agreements to set minimum terms and conditions in social care and to promote collective bargaining in early learning and childcare.
Disturbingly, in the context of the goal of inclusive and sustainable economic growth, the STUC reports
“daily stories from young hospitality workers about bullying, harassment and unpaid wages”.
They are the kind of stories that we would hope not to be hearing in the 2020s.
What is to be done? The editors of “On Target for 2030?” do not attempt to summarise the range of contributions, but they draw some conclusions, which I hope the minister will address in closing the debate. Among other things, they conclude that
“whilst there is clear policy and political commitment on all of the Goals in Scotland, more needs to be done in order to meet the 2030 targets”,
that
“There is a lack of available, high-quality Scotland-specific data in some policy areas”,
and that
“further work is needed to improve and build upon”
the existing “fairly loose alignment” between the outcomes and indicators in the Scottish Government’s national performance framework and the UN’s sustainable development goals.
In briefing members in advance of today’s debate, the SDG Network Scotland built on those conclusions with specific asks of the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament. The network supports the Scottish Government’s approach of carrying out a supplementary review to support the report by the UK, as the member state of the United Nations. The network says that the supplementary review was prepared on a transparent, collaborative and innovative basis, and that it provides a model that the UK Government would do well to follow. However, thus far, the report is available only online in draft form, and the network is keen for it to be concluded and published in its final form as soon as possible. I hope that the minister can give an undertaking on that today.
The SDG Network also calls on us, as a Parliament, to align our remits more closely with the sustainable development goals, with regular debates in the future to hold the Government to account on progress. As members of Parliament consider what priorities we might wish to suggest for members in the next session of Parliament, this might be the right time to highlight the 2030 agenda for sustainable development as a proper focus for the 2020s.
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